1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a device for loading large caliber weapons. More particularly a device including a rammer having a coupling suitable for connecting to the ammunication or cartridge base. The loading device is reciprocally movable with respect to a basic structural component such as a charging tube, in the loading direction. The component has a drive means for the rammer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Loading devices are known which are suited only for transferring the ammunition into a barrel, by transmitting a pushing force. When loading from a magazine, the magazine chambers or sleeves must have a slide-through cross section in order to accomodate such ammunition. Such systems have high engineering and economic draw backs because they have inflexible spatial configurations and the ammunition must be secured in position in a magazine chamber with a large slide-through cross section. In particular, there is the loss of unloadability, where unloadability is the possibility of returning, to the magazie ammunition which was previously transferred to the barrel.
Other known loading devices exhibit a rammer having a coupling suited to transmit, alternately, either a compression or tension force to the base of the ammunition, thus enabling one to dispense with slide-through magazine chambers and employ magazine chambers which match the cross section of the ammunition as it converges with progression toward the give or nose of the ammunition. The ammunition can be withdrawn from such a chamber in one axial direction and can be pushed back in the opposite axial direction. Thus, unloading the barrel to the magazine is also the possible. A problem of how to engage and release a grip-type coupling between the rammer and the base of the ammunication without losing systematic synchronization of such engaging and releasing with the reciprocal movement of the rammer exists with loading devices suited for sliding ammunition into a barrel or magazine chamber or the like, and for pulling ammunition out of the barrel or the magazine chamber.
The coupling must grip the ammunition when the rammer is pushed up against the base of the ammunition in order to withdraw the ammunition when disposed in the cartridge chamber or in the magazine chamber. After ammunition has been transferred into the cartridge or magazine chamber, the coupling must not grip but release the ammunition.
There are no control means shown for the coupling which can adapt to the different tasks.
Controllable electromagnetic couplings disposed on the rammer are known. For safety reasons it is extremely undesirable to employ electromagnetic fields in the vicinity of the base of the ammunition because of the danger of detonating the ammunition.